Study: How many U.S. troops are you willing to see die in Iraq?

How many casualties are “acceptable?” That depends.

Example #1: The “acceptable casualties” question loomed large with the Clinton Administration when it engaged in Sudan/Afghanistan, Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo and Operation Desert Fox. And their answer was clear: Zero, or as close to zero as possible.

That’s why, in the 1990s, we relied almost entirely on sea-launched cruise missiles and aircraft dropping precision-guided munitions from 15,000 feet. Didn’t want the other guys to be able to hit back. Remember how long it took for the Army to “deploy” troops to the fighting in Kosovo? Even a few Apache attack helicopters took weeks to get there … and that was on purpose. The administration was in no hurry to expose ground troops to hostile fire.

Why did the Clinton arrive at the figure of “zero” for “acceptable casualties?” The answer is twofold:

1. Clinton was extremely sensitive about his Vietnam draft-dodging, so he was also extremely hesitant to risk battle casualties as commander-in-chief lest charges of hypocrisy be leveled at him. Clinton himself has said as much.

2. The Clinton administration generally didn’t bother to gain the approval of the Senate or the American people for its military engagements (not to mention that of the United Nations); as a result, without building up a clear consensus for war with the Senate or the American people, the administration couldn’t afford anything more than a few casualties without risking a political backlash (especially after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994).

Lesson to be learned from this experience? The number of “acceptable casualties” is directly linked to how well the administration – any administration – has prepared the Congress and the American public to be prepared to accept casualties. Americans have shown throughout their history that they will put up with scores of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of combat deaths when they clearly understand that the stakes are high enough; even when our national survival wasn’t at stake, we took more than 50,000 battle deaths in Korea and Vietnam before the public began to seriously demand an end to those two conflicts.

Example #2: This is where the current administration has clearly failed in getting the message to the American people about the stakes involved in the current struggle. For after suffering in nearly four years of fighting battle deaths that were little more than a day’s work at the Normandy beaches, a large portion of the American public has become convinced that even 3,000 combat deaths are “not worth it.”

The as-of-late aversion of the American people to sustain large-scale casualties is thus the product of two administrations’ approaches to not preparing them for high casualties: The Clinton administration didn’t even bother trying, and the Bush administration never could come up with a coherent message in the face of media and democrat hostility.

Spurius Ligustinus on December 18, 2006 at 6:30 PM